Irrelevant
by OrangePlum
Summary: Sherlock never understood the seriousness of a person in pain... At least, not until he met John Watson. Can be platonic if you wish or Sherlock/John if you squint.


Author's Notes: I may have switched interests. It may be temporary or permanent; I'm not even sure myself. In the meantime, enjoy a John and Sherlock dramatic-ish story. : ) Why Martin Freeman hasn't married me yet, I haven't a clue (aside from, you know, him already bestowed with a wife and 2 kids lol).

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><p>It wasn't surprising in the least that John Watson didn't utter a single word of his own volition on the cab ride back to their flat. Sherlock had anticipated the juvenile silent treatment that John had always subconsciously activated when in a foul mood, which, coincidentally, usually had something to do with the socially oblivious detective. But nevertheless, that didn't take away from Sherlock's typical need to know and dissect a situation for what it was.<p>

They had just finished up a recent case involving a double homicide of a mother and her daughter – it was the husband's estranged friend who had harbored a secret obsession for the man, incidentally – and Sherlock felt very pleased with the outcome. Another criminal behind bars, yet John still sat huddled stiffly on his side of the cab, face stony and eyebrows dipped in an expression of displeasure.

Sherlock bestowed him with a few occasional side glances from his illuminated cell phone before deciding to make a few comments to gauge just how displeased his associate was.

"Leaving behind such an obvious trail of evidence of his affection, incriminating himself; a rather imbecilic man, wouldn't you agree?" he asked dully, half paying attention as he typed away on his gadget.

"Mm-hm," John grunted offhandedly.

A long pause.

"Anderson took his sweet time. Because of his quibbling it's already dusk." More typing.

"Mhm."

Type, type, typing.

"At least this was worthy enough of keeping the boredom away, no matter how momentary."

John coughed into his hand.

All attempts at conversation had ended, Sherlock gaining sufficient information on John's emotional state. He didn't even have to ponder about why he was in such a foul mood, and merely stepped out of the car with a quick twist of his long torso, eyes never leaving his cellular device as he walked towards the door of 221b. Sherlock continued up the stairs, hearing the heavy thuds of John's shoes as the blonde sighed quietly and shut the door, a newfound irritation leaking into his tone.

He was always left paying for the taxis, after all.

Sherlock went about his own business once inside their flat, discarding his phone and throwing his scarf haphazardly up on a hook while he peeled his coat off and tossed it on a chair, rummaging through the kitchen with full intent on checking up on his most recent experiment in the vegetable drawer. While Sherlock busied himself with his usual agenda, John begrudgingly began to pick up the mess around the sitting room. It had been a right mess for nearly a week now.

After nearly forty-eight minutes of sulking, Sherlock had no more patience for ignoring the ex-army doctor's downtrodden attitude.

"You are upset," he stated matter-of-factly, observing some cell samples under his microscope on the table. He heard John shift from his seat with a book he had just been staring at blankly for the past twenty minutes, most likely looking up with a somewhat guarded expression. Sherlock didn't wait to see if he'd respond, simply adjusting the magnification and prattling on in an uninterested tone. Emotions could be so _boring_.

"It is about Leslie Simps," he clarified, the murderer's girlfriend. Ah – well, now _ex_-girlfriend, her surmised. "You are upset that she was present during the confrontation."

John remained silent for a long while, lips undoubtedly pursed in that tight fashion, face crinkled and hesitant whenever Sherlock took up this 'see-all, know-all' tone. The brunette glanced briefly up from his slide and smirked the barest ghost of a smile when seeing that he was correct, before continuing his observations.

"She got hurt," John muttered after a thick minute, voice low and unhappy.

Well. Spot on.

"It was unavoidable. If we did not confront him then, there would've been no confrontation at all. We would have lost our culprit and another immoral being would still be out on the streets," explained the detective, wishing John would understand the logic he always spoke of. It was for the greater good, after all.

John was still not placated.

"That doesn't mean – You didn't have to put her in that position," John argued, frowning. He stared at his flatmate with a heaviness under his skin, jaw clenched slightly as he remembered the fear etched onto that woman's face as her boyfriend panicked and placed a knife to her throat as leverage. "She could have been seriously injured…" he murmured quietly, frowning at the floor now.

"Sometimes desperate situations call for risks."

John growled low in his chest, scowling openly at his impassive friend. Were they friends now? Associates? He shook that thought away to ponder another night, flexing his fingers against the armrests and persisting. "You don't get it at all, do you, Sherlock? You can't just… You can't do that to people. It _matters_. What if he had killed her? What if he had sliced her clean without a second thought?" John asked frantically, waving his hands for emphasis.

Sherlock actually spared him enough of his attention to look at the worried doctor, gray eyes evaluating quietly as he ran them over the man across from him.

"She was never in any real danger. I knew he would not–"

"You can never know that!" John burst, standing up. "You can't just assume you know a total stranger – a loose cannon, at that – will not harm someone they may or may not have an attachment to! Human lives aren't a game. I don't know why you insist on treating them like one!"

"You're getting hysterical," Sherlock commented easily when John had started to raise his voice. The comment did not calm the frustrated flatmate down at all. It was the truth, though. Emotions easily consumed John when a situation like this arose with human lives. It was impossible to understand from Sherlock's perspective so he did not put much effort into trying. He never understood the attachment to stranger's lives.

"Does it even bother you that she had to get sixteen stitches?" A demand.

Sherlock didn't say anything.

"_Well_?" John asked with a wave of his hand.

"Her life was not in any danger. An injury that minor is nothing to blow out of proportion." A simple explanation.

John huffed and ran a hand roughly through his hair, frustrated. He knew Sherlock was like a robot when coming to understand things like this. But just once did he wish to get through to the most moronically brilliant man he knew.

"What if I had been the one in her position? What if I was the one getting the stitches?" John asked, desperate gaze hoping to get through to the impassive man standing in the kitchen watching him. Sherlock didn't answer. He didn't move, aside from the small muscle twitch of his lip, the corner of one pulling down briefly at the thought.

Sherlock turned back to his slide. "Irrelevant."

"_Irr_–?" John mimicked before choking back his disbelief. He shook his head, running his hands down his face in exasperation. The way Sherlock had gone back to his current task showed his dying interest in this conversation. After all, they'd had it approximately four times before, always the same outcome. After a long moment John sighed, resigning to his recurring pout before he drug his feet and trailed upstairs towards his room.

He didn't even take notice of a head of brown hair poking up over the microscope to watch his back disappear. All he could think about was sleep. He just needed to sleep.

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><p>There was a strange feeling that consume Sherlock as he halted his dash, feet digging into the cobblestones of the cold London night. His breaths came out like clouds, icy and chilled as the froth pooled from his lips into the dark air. His heartbeat was like a drum in his temples, yet it felt different from the regular thrum-thrumming of a heart after a jog.<p>

This felt heavier, thicker.

The detective twisted around, eyes widening the smallest amount as he glanced back over his shoulder, in the direction which he had come from. It was oddly quiet for the middle of the night. He had expected to be on the right trail, chasing after another twisted, foolish person up to no good. Really, now. The game was wonderful, yes, but did Lestrade really rely that much on him to actually have to chase after so many miscreants in the dark?

But it wasn't the running around London in the middle of the night that suddenly had his skin crawling. No, not tonight.

It had consequently been that sharp popping sound that had torn across the sky like a shattering bottle of glass.

He was in a full sprint, backtracking, one word playing on a loop in his mind. _Shit._

A gunshot. That was distinctively a gunshot in the air. Black coat flapping about his legs as he managed to not slip on the wet stones, Sherlock ran until his lungs felt like they were full of ice. The last thing he needed was to find another dead body from this culprit.

Splitting up with John to chase after this particular dimwitted assailant seemed to be the main thing swirling around his brain at the moment. He did not know if this man had been armed. He was stupid and seemed to kill when he was in a rage, as he had left the body of a man he had lost a bet to behind a pub. It would be foolish to assume that he wasn't, however.

Sherlock skidded to a halt, gloved hand pushing against a wall as he tried to gain his breath, brow furrowing as he squinted his eyes in the darkness. It was hard to see at first, but that was definitely a body at the end of that alleyway. It didn't look very tall, nor did it have long or scraggly hair.

Sherlock panted and gulped down as much oxygen as he could, concluding that it had to be John. And here he'd thought it had been the murderer.

White noise consumed him as the body suddenly started to wobble, slouching against a wall before crumpling down to the moist street. A phantom noise of a gunshot echoed in the back of his ears before his legs started to move, an unfamiliar feeling consuming him. It wasn't new. He had felt the brief sting of it during the pool incident when coming face to face with Moriarty, John's disgruntled and anxious posture hunkered down as a red light danced across his chest.

Fear.

_Was this fear_? Sherlock briefly wondered as he knelt down quickly next to John, the doctor grimacing and clutching at his side.

"John? Are you all right?" he demanded briskly, trying to gain eye-contact. John's face was scrunched up in pain, his breath hitching slightly as he grit his teeth, head resting against the side of the building. "Answer me. _Are you all right_?" Sherlock's ears were ringing and stomach was twisting and he vaguely did recognize this as a form of fear. Guns and bombs seemed to do that to him. Well… whenever concerning John Watson, apparently.

John pushed his hovering hand away, finally looking at Sherlock when hearing the same urgency in his voice when he had removed the explosives from his person.

"I'm fine," he reassured, voice strained. "H-he left. He ran down that way," John instructed, pointing down another string of alleyways. "You can catch him if you hurry. He couldn't have gotten far…"

Sherlock frowned, still trying to sort through whatever it was in him that was distressing him. Yes, he could still get the culprit, and now he knew what he was armed with. It was the logical thing to do. If he could just get up and follow after him, that would be the intelligent thing to do–

But then John pulled his hand back to curiously see the damage and his hand was red. Painted like a crimson rose, John's fingers were sticky with the liquid life that should've been in his veins at the moment. It was enough to make the medic's eyes widen and the breath get caught in Sherlock's throat.

There was so much blood.

John cursed under his breath, knees giving out beneath him, unable to kneel any longer, as he placed his full weight against the wall. Sherlock caught his shoulder, placing his gloved hand tightly over John's, putting so much pressure against that leaking side. So much pressure to just stop please stop there's too much blood.

"Don't move," he ordered, fumbling for his cell phone in his deep coat pocket. John kept labored breaths as he watched the usually placid detective curiously, Sherlock fidgeting somewhat as he dialed 999 and insulted the person on the other line as they asked him what he probably deemed as pointless questions.

"Sherlock…?" John muttered under his heavy breathing, surprised at how annoyed he looked. "Sh-Sherlock, calm–"

John jumped when being directed with a cold stare. "Shut up. Don't you talk. Keep putting pressure there."

John wanted to roll his eyes. He didn't need to take any medical advice from Sherlock. He _was_ a doctor after all. But he still did as he was told, observing Sherlock silently and trying to ignore the burning pain in his side as the blaring wails of an ambulance could be heard approaching in the distance.

It was a strange experience. For the both of them, Sherlock supposed, as he watched John being taken away in the truck, his own fingers quivering, glove now stained with a part of John Watson. He was confused and worn out, unsure how to process a powerful emotion like that.

But even as relief should've swept through him when he was informed that the bullet merely grazed John's side, giving the blonde some quick stitches, he couldn't help but feel that that was some sort of wake up call. As if a deity up there somewhere wanted to prove a point. Perhaps John was in on it too as he gave that sort of fatigued smile from the other side of the emergency room and waved towards him.

Sixteen stitches precisely.

Perhaps this game wasn't as irrelevant as he had previously thought.


End file.
